‘When you meet a bully,’ Roger Wonsit thrust his hands deep into his trousers pockets and surveyed the class of schoolboys before him, ‘you must not allow yourself to be cowed and you must not take to your heels like a coward.’
He paused and allowed his injunctions to sink in before proceeding. He took a turn round the classroom, his head held high, a steely look in his grey eyes. His captive audience, for the most part boys of seven and eight years old, listened with mixed feelings as the famous ex-boxer clenched and unclenched his fists.
Jonathan Cape, the second smallest boy in the class, was glad he wasn’t a bully. On the other hand he doubted if he would be able to stand his ground for long should a bully suddenly confront him. Roger Wonsit was going on.
‘I,’ he said and he paused for a longer period, ‘have met many bullies in my time and I have dispatched them thus!’ Here he feinted and thrust a straight left into the face of an imaginary bully before demolishing the scoundrel with a right cross.
‘There are other methods,’ he went on belligerently, ‘but the most important thing is that you must never allow anything or anybody to come between yourself and your particular bully.’ Here he extended his arms and emitted a blood-curdling whoop that made the hairs stand on Jonathan’s head. He looked around for an avenue of escape, convinced that the middle-aged man before him was about to dismember several members of the class. Instead Roger Wonsit seized the imaginary bully by the hair of the head and swung him round and round as though he were a wet dishcloth.
‘When your bully comes into view,’ he shouted at the top of his voice, ‘what must you do?’ The class waited eagerly for the great boxer to continue but Roger was not continuing. He was once more applying his tried and trusted psychology of allowing his words to sink in. After several moments he clapped his hands together and asked for the second time: ‘What must you do when your bully stands before you?’
When no answer came, as expected, he provided one.
‘You must go for his jugular. Forget the size of him and the weight of him. Just go for him and get stuck in. Now what do you do when you see your bully?’ The class responded at once, even Jonathan Cape.
‘You must go for his jugular and get stuck in.’
‘Again.’ Roger Wonsit lifted his outstretched palms demanding a more forceful response. This time the class went overboard as such classes do when given the slightest opportunity. Satisfied that he could elicit no more by way of vocal reply he executed a neat dance around the room, shadow-boxing and flooring imaginary assailants at every hand’s turn. If asked, most of the boys’ parents would be hard put to recall the championship bouts won by Roger Wonsit. They would remember him as an amateur boxer all right and they would remember that he was without peer when it came to weaving and to footwork and to wild swings, any one of which would have dispatched his opponent to Kingdom Come had it landed but they could not recall any knock-outs. The boys’ teacher would agree but a number of the more gullible females in the parish had insisted that Roger be allowed talk to the boys.
The emergence, after a long period of relative peace, of several youthful bullies had prompted the action in the first place. The schoolteacher first approached his headmaster, an elderly chap justly famed for his sarcastic comments, and asked for his approval.
‘Who did you say?’ the headmaster asked in disbelief.
‘Roger Wonsit,’ his assistant informed him.
‘Roger Wonsit,’ said the headmaster wearily as was his way, ‘would not beat a dead dog. In fact,’ he continued, ‘Roger Wonsit would not beat the snow off his own overcoat.’
Having rid himself of his daily spew of sarcasm he confided to his assistant that he had no objection to the proposal.
On his way home Jonathan dawdled as only schoolboys dawdle and have been dawdling since the first school was established. As he gazed through a confectioner’s window he was joined by his friend Bob’s Bobby, an unkempt lad with tousled hair and a wide gap in his upper teeth.
Bob’s Bobby was of the travelling people. Confined now to the town’s suburbs because of the severity of the winter they would stay put till spring came over the windowsill, as the song says. Then they would move into the countryside and Bob’s Bobby’s schooling would end temporarily and prematurely as it did every year.
Like most of his kind Bob’s Bobby had little interest in schooling. The teacher understood his feelings in this respect and left him alone for the most part provided he behaved himself.
Jonathan counted the meagre coins which he had withdrawn from his pocket.
‘Come on!’ He elbowed his friend and made his way into the confectioner’s where he went directly to a blonde-haired, rather corpulent young woman who greeted him by his first name.
‘A currant bun if you please Miss Polly.’ Jonathan handed over the coins and if Miss Polly noticed that there was a minor deficit she kept it to herself and rung up the amount received on the till behind her back.
Outside the shop the boys stood silently examining the bun which sat invitingly on Jonathan’s palm. With a skill beyond his years Jonathan managed to divide the bun into two fair halves. He handed one to his friend and if you think that they gobbled the halves down at once then you don’t know boys. They consumed the delicate pastry crumb by crumb as only small boys can and when they finished they licked their fingers clean and they ran their tongues around their mouths lest a solitary particle escape. This is not to say that small boys do not wolf and gobble. Of course they do but there are times when the fare is scarce and it is at these times that they prolong the consumption of the delicacy although it must be said that they are not above retaining choice pieces for the very end and these they may well gobble like starving wolves. It is the way of all boys and many adults.
On their way homeward they spoke of many things and then there came the subject of bullies. They were agreed that bullies were best avoided and neither would subscribe to the way-out views of Roger Wonsit. His name, Bob’s Bobby recalled, had often come up at night as the travelling folk sat around their campfire. It was Bob’s Bobby’s grandfather Big Bob who had mentioned the boxer’s name.
‘I saw him fight once,’ the old man told the extended family as they savoured the heat from the glowing logfire. ‘In those days he was called Killer Wonsit but I shall never know why for as far as I could see, he was not possessed of the power to kill a butterfly. On the night I saw him he was fighting a man called Crusher Kaly and I shall never know why for he would not crush a skinless banana. They fought for three rounds and not a single blow was struck although I must admit that both boxers left the ring hardly able to stand. I remember they made a lot of noises and they threw a lot of punches but they hadn’t a scratch between them when the final bell sounded. The two together would not make one fighting man.’
The young friends parted at Jonathan Cape’s front door. Sometimes Jonathan would accompany Bob’s Bobby to the campsite and already Jonathan was well acquainted with Big Bob and other lesser-known members of the travelling clan. However, on this particular occasion, Jonathan made the excuse that he had errands to run. He did not say that the real reason was fear of meeting a bully. Truth to tell there was only one real bully in the community and he was newly emerged. He had not yet attracted any henchmen although there was one small, harmless boy who followed him about wherever he went. Already the bully whose sobriquet happened to be Pugace had beaten up several younger bullies and was in receipt of weekly dividends from a score or so of terrified small boys in whom he had successfully invested his time and intimidatory tactics. He didn’t have to beat up these victims of his terror campaign. The fame of Pugface had spread throughout the town but only among the schoolchildren. It was their secret and even their parents were in the dark as to the identity of the wretch who was responsible for the sleepless, tortured nights of their offspring.
Pugface had threatened his victims with absolute dismemberment should they breathe a word of his existence to anybody.
Imagine the horror experienced by Jonathan when there was no response to his frenzied knocking just as Pugface, trailed by his satellite, came swaggering down the street. Jonathan’s mother, if only he had known, was next door copying a yuletide recipe from her neighbour. Jonathan tried to make himself look smaller as Pugface drew near but failed utterly in his first attempt at self-diminishment.
‘Got any money boy?’ The question came from the uncouth, over-grown twelve-year-old who stood towering above him.
If only I hadn’t purchased that bun, Jonathan thought.
‘You deaf boy?’ The second question was accompanied by a vicious wigging of Jonathan’s left ear. When the bully let go Jonathan remembered Roger Wonsit’s words. He withdrew several yards, to the bigger boy’s astonishment.
‘Go for the jugular!’ That’s what Wonsit had said. Jonathan did not know exactly where the jugular was situated but he suspected it must be somewhere downstairs or else he would surely have heard his mother use it. He bent his head and ran at his tormentor with a high-pitched squeal. Almost at once, after he had rebounded, he found himself on the flat of his back. Pugface lifted him to his feet by the hair of his head.
‘You have my money ready for me next time we meet, you hear boy, else you won’t reckernise yourself when you look in the mirror.’
‘Sure!’ Jonathan assured him.
‘You won’t forget boy!’ Pugface was now wigging the right ear.
‘I won’t! I won’t! I won’t!’ Jonathan promised. Later he might have told his mother or he might have told his father who had been a crack footballer in his heyday but a fitful sleep full of nightmares would pass before he confided in anybody. After school he informed his friend Bob’s Bobby of the previous afternoon’s disaster. Christmas was but three days distant and if Jonathan was to hand over his Christmas money there would be nothing left for presents. The friends decided that under no circumstances should any money be handed over. Bob’s Bobby was emphatic especially since Jonathan had disclosed to him some weeks before that he intended buying him a Christmas present.
‘And I’ll get you one too,’ Bob’s Bobby had replied although after this impetuous promise he did not know where the money for such a luxury would come from. The travellers had little money and the little they had they needed for food and clothing and sometimes for medicine and professional treatment for their sick horses and ponies.
After school the friends decided on a circuitous way home. Bob’s Bobby went first so that Jonathan would have time to beat a hasty retreat should his tormentor appear.
‘He won’t bother with me,’ Bob’s Bobby explained. ‘I don’t have any money and I don’t have nowhere to get money.’ Having escorted his charge to his front door and having waited till he was safely indoors Bob’s Bobby hurried homewards, not because he was afraid of Pugface but because he wished to consult his grandfather before the old man departed to the next county where he planned to spend the twelve days of Christmas with his youngest daughter who happened to be married to a travelling man with a loose base in that part of the world. Bob’s Bobby found the old man about to depart. First he asked him about the likely locations of red-berried holly trees and then he told him of Jonathan’s predicament. Small bearts of red-berried holly sold at one shilling each and there was, Bob’s Bobby reckoned, enough time left to him before Christmas to dispose of sufficient bearts to meet his financial requirements for Christmas.
The old man disclosed the whereabouts of three giant holly trees in the extreme corner of a distant wood.
‘Cut your branches cleanly and then only the tiniest,’ the old traveller warned. ‘This way the trees will not suffer and other branches will grow in place of those you cut. For God’s sake do not hack or bend or pull branches or the trees will suffer great pain.’
Bob’s Bobby promised Big Bob that the trees would not be injured.
‘Now,’ said his grandfather, ‘what was this other matter you wanted to talk about?’ Briefly Bob’s Bobby ran though the events of the day and the day before.
‘I know him to see him,’ Big Bob informed his grandson, ‘and he’s no different from any other bully except that this fellow is blubber from head to toe and will not last long in a scrap. Still he’s big and blustery and by now he’s used to scaring people so he thinks he’s tough.’ Followed by his grandson, Big Bob led the way to a small alder grove out of earshot of the makeshift canvas tents and other improvised shelters. There were caravans too, brightly painted down to the very wheel-spokes, canvas-covered as well and not at all unlike the covered wagons used by the early American trail-blazers as they pioneered their way across an undeveloped continent.
‘This Pugface,’ Big Bob lit his pipe and allowed the blue smoke to ascend through the branches overhead, ‘will fall or maybe run the same as all his kind as soon as he meets anybody who’ll stand up to him. As far as I can see your friend Jonathan is not this person although from what you’ve told me he does not seem wanting in courage. Courage alone is never enough when you’re dealing with somebody twice your size so it seems to me that you are the very man to deal with Pugface.’
‘Me!’ Bob’s Bobby could scarcely restrain the laughter which came surging from his throat. Ignoring the outburst his grandfather led him by the hand through the grove until they reached an ancient stile which led into an even more ancient graveyard.
‘Your great-grandfather, who was my father, lies over there where the ivy climbs the wall near the corner. He was the smallest of all his brothers and some say he was the smallest traveller that ever lived in this part of the country. Yet, for all that, he beat four well-known bullies in the same day in four different places and at the end of that day they stopped being bullies for the rest of their lives. In many ways you resemble him. You have his eyes and you have his hair but now you must ask yourself if you have his wiles and above all you must ask yourself if you have his heart so what you must do is go over to his grave and ask him for the loan of his wiles and the loan of his heart. If a voice comes up out of the ground that says no it will mean that he doesn’t want you to have them but if there is no answer by the count of three sevens it will mean that he has passed the things you need over to you. So long as you have his heart and his wiles you need fear no man. Off with you now and I will stand here till you return.’
Big Bob smiled grimly as he watched his nimble grandson leap from mound to mound towards the grave and at the same time, as his grandfather’s smile grew grimmer, to his first brush with those who would deny him and deny his friends their natural rights. He watched as the skinny figure made the sign of the cross and he laughed aloud when, at the end of his supplication, he leaped into the air a transformed person. He arrived breathless at Big Bob’s side.
‘You feel better now?’ his grandfather asked.
Bob’s Bobby nodded.
‘And you feel bigger now?’
‘Oh yes. Much bigger,’ came the reply.
‘All you have to do now is walk up to Pugface in the schoolyard tomorrow and invite him to fight.’ Big Bob made it sound as if it was a run-of-the-mill task. His grandson nodded eagerly.
‘Now let us return to the camp and on our way I will tell you a few things which will make your job easier. Naturally you will keep these things to yourself or you’ll lose your advantage before you begin.’
‘Naturally,’ came back the positive response. That night the newly infused champion of civil liberties slept soundly and did not awaken until his mother called him for school. His breakfast consisted of a pannyful of sweetened oatmeal porridge and he devoured it with a relish.
As usual during the lunch break the schoolyard was crowded. Pugface stood in the centre surrounded by his fear-filled followers. Bob’s Bobby swung him around sharply and invited him to fight after school at a particular place where schoolboys had fought for generations. The venue was an ancient, tree-lined lane which led to the river bank. Mostly the place was deserted although when darkness fell courting couples would converge on the area, sometimes reclining in amorous embraces against the trunks of the giant beeches and, other times, when the moon was visible, walking the river bank hand in hand.
Pugface was temporarily at a loss for words and while he futilely instituted a search for same a crowd of schoolboys began to gather. All eyes were focused on Pugface. Bob’s Bobby stood with his skinny legs apart awaiting an answer, his great-grandfather’s burning eyes fixed unwaveringly on those of the school’s most notorious bully, still speechless and under mounting pressure to make a statement.
The laughter which should have surfaced at the tiny traveller’s outrageous challenge was stifled by the intensity of his glare and by the rigidity of his stance.
Only a few moments before a rumour had spread like wildfire through the playground. Bob’s Bobby, for all his insignificance and despite his tender years, had killed a grown man with a single kidney punch, a Tasmanian backhander, during a summer altercation at the great fair of Puck in Killorglin in the county of Kerry. It was certain that nobody in the school, the teachers apart, knew the precise whereabouts of the kidneys and it was even more certain that nobody, the teachers included, would ever before have heard of a Tasmanian backhander and how would they when the now oft-repeated phrase had, until that time, belonged exclusively to the vocabulary of Big Bob the traveller who had created it only the day before.
The story of the Killorglin massacre, started initially by Jonathan Cape, had now spread to every corner of the school ground and still, after all this time, Pugface had not responded to Bob’s Bobby’s challenge nor had he even decided whether he should take the challenge seriously. Finally he spoke.
‘After school,’ he growled, ‘I’ll kill you stone dead. First I’ll tear off your ears and I’ll keep them for my cat. Then I’ll tear out your heart and I’ll keep it for my dog. Then I’ll break your legs and your hands and your head.’
‘After school.’ Bob’s Bobby joined his friend Jonathan who stood near the front of the onlooking throng. The pair decided to return earlier than usual to their classroom. ‘We will take this puffed sciortán from your withers,’ Bob’s Bobby assured his friend, ‘and that will be my Christmas present to you.’
It was his grandfather who had made the original statement regarding the sciortán, his final words, before his departure for his daughter’s home in west Cork.
Through the branches of the great trees the sun’s rays shed a mottled light on the riverside arena where two hundred schoolboys had gathered to witness the demolition of Bob’s Bobby. They were not quite convinced that he had killed a man at the fair of Killorglin and, even if he had, it was certain that members of his clan were at hand to render assistance but every schoolboy would agree that the travelling folk were wily and fearless and there was no doubt about the fact that they would have a variety of ploys and stratagems to suit every occasion. They were most eager to witness, for the first time, the execution of the Tasmanian backhander. Some were sceptical but the majority would have seen the fighting men of the travellers in action at fairs and festivals where they would resort to the most outlandish stratagems in order to gain the upper hand.
‘Right, make a ring!’ The curt command came from a senior boy whose father was a teacher in the school. It was apparent that some of the father’s authority had rubbed off on the son for a ring was created almost immediately and a great hush ensued while the self-appointed master of ceremonies raised his hands aloft and called upon the protagonists to enter the circle. First in was Pugface, shadow-boxing as he entered and snorting like a regular professional as he delivered deadly blows from every angle. The onlookers screamed and shouted at the tops of their yet unbroken voices. Bob’s Bobby’s entry was less dramatic than his rival’s. His approach was indifferent and even reposeful especially when his supporters, and they were in a majority, cheered him until their lungs were fit to burst.
The master of ceremonies now took up his position between the opponents.
‘Is it to be a fight to the finish?’ he demanded in stentorian tones.
‘Yes. Yes!’ two hundred voices answered frenetically before either of the principals had a chance to approve or disapprove.
‘I’ll count to ten,’ the master of ceremonies spoke shrilly, ‘and when the count is concluded the fight will begin and it will be a fight to the finish.’
He pushed the waiting pugilists well apart but before he could commence the count Bob’s Bobby took off his tattered shortcoat and folded it neatly before handing it to his second who chanced to be none other than Jonathan Cape. He then spat on his hands while the onlookers remarked that they had never in their lives beheld such a look in any man’s eyes before. The burning orbs fixed themselves on those of Pugface who bent his head, unable to withstand the baleful glare of the tiny traveller. The taking off of the shortcoat had unnerved him. Worse was to follow.
Spitting on his hands a second time Bob’s Bobby took off his frayed shirt and folded it neatly. Again he handed it over to his second. The wily traveller then removed his vest until he stood bare from the waist up. He flexed his wrists as an excited murmur ran through the crowd. Could this be the prelude to the devastating Tasmanian backhander? They were never to find out, for Pugface’s courage, already wilting after the divesting of the shortcoat, went into sharper decline after the taking off of the shirt. A cold fear gripped him when the last garment of the upper body was handed over to a grinning Jonathan Cape. Why was Cape grinning? Why was the traveller so cocksure? Why did his own hands shake and why did his knees weaken? Why did he wish he was somewhere else all of a sudden and why did the traveller’s eyes burn like glowing embers so that his own eyes were blinded and he was unable to see straight? With a cry of indescribable passion the young traveller sunk his teeth into the side of his lower lip. The red blood spurted forth and ran down his chin, coursed down his neck and spread itself over his chest. With a second even more unnerving shriek he rubbed the blood all over his face and arms. Several faint-hearted onlookers took flight. Others, unaccustomed to the sight of blood, fell insensible to the ground.
Bob’s Bobby now presented an absolutely hideous sight. The blood drained from the drooling visage of his disintegrating opponent and, worst of all, the shrieking, demoniacal, blood-covered impish traveller was about to launch his first attack. Pugface staggered backwards uttering strange sounds made up of gasps and whimpers and sobs. Then suddenly he turned and ran for his life pursued by Bob’s Bobby and Jonathan Cape and a score of other victims of his vile intimidation. They followed him through the streets of the astonished town until he arrived at his own door, a wretched figure still slobbering and sobbing. He disappeared indoors without a single, solitary look behind and was not seen in public for a full week. When he reappeared he was a different Pugface, kind, thoughtful, considerate and courteous to young and old. He would so remain for the remainder of his natural life and when he died prematurely trying to save a drowning cat his was one of the largest funerals ever seen in the district. The travelling folk said of him that he went straight to heaven and that he was embraced three times by St Peter at the pearly gates. After the fight Bob’s Bobby, accompanied by his faithful friend, returned to the grave of his great-grandfather where he ceremoniously returned the wiles and the heart he had borrowed. He would never seek a loan of them again for to have these precious things once, even for a short while, is to have them forever. The Christmas that followed was the best for many a year especially for small boys.